Staffing firm inks agreement with attorney general

Labor Ready has inked an agreement with state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman calling for the temporary staffing firm to make sure it pays prevailing wages to workers it sends to public works projects.

The firm, which specializes in blue-collar workers, has 600 U.S. locations, including two in Rochester.

New York’s prevailing wage laws require contractors on publicly financed projects to pay wages equal to what union workers in the same area would make.

The pact signed with Schneiderman calls for the staffing firm to:

Train all of its placement employees about public-works legal requirements at least once a year and send Schneiderman’s office regular reports on the training program;

Require New York employers that Labor Ready supplies with temporary help to certify that they will hew to prevailing wage measures;

Refrain from placing temporary workers at firms on publicly available debarment lists; and

Set up a system that promptly pays back wages to workers in cases where prevailing wage rules have been breached and pay a hefty fine if such workers are not paid promptly.

Labor Ready inked the agreement with Schneiderman after a Long Island lawyer referred a case to the attorney general’s office in which Labor Ready paid two workers it supplied to a Hempstead, L.I. public works project at an $8 an hour rate. In that case, Labor Ready agreed to pay $10,000 to the two workers and also paid a $10,000 fine.